Multimedia data can be streamed and encoded in many different ways. One aspect of encoding deals with uniformity or variation in the streaming bit rate. The characteristics of the data have implications on design on numerous components of the end to end streaming server system. These components include resources on the server such as disk bandwidth, CPU, memory and network bandwidth on the server, the CPU, memory and network bandwidth on the client as well as the network itself. Delivery of variable bit rate streaming multimedia data presents numerous challenges even with a single data format, but the level of difficulty is increased dramatically when streaming media assets of multiple data formats are to be delivered on a single system.
Another problem streaming media servers face is the resolution of streaming media assets that have to be delivered simultaneously. Scheduling simultaneous delivery has involved large, parallel infrastructure for delivering multiple streams simultaneously in previous approaches that results in idle system resources for an unacceptable amount of time. Idle resources translate directly into higher operating costs and reduced profits for commercial servers. Thus, there is a need for servers that can more efficiently deliver streaming media assets simultaneously to multiple users using infrastructure that is flexible to a variety of media formats.